Is it true or false that after taking a gap year after undergrad, admissions committees put less weight on your gpa? I am wanting to take a gap year, but will have to reconsider this option if my stellar gpa is weighted less as a result.

HydroFlask666 wrote:Is it true or false that after taking a gap year after undergrad, admissions committees put less weight on your gpa? I am wanting to take a gap year, but will have to reconsider this option if my stellar gpa is weighted less as a result.

I took 12 gap years...and they put .0001% less weight on my GPA in the admissions process. As long as USNWR uses UGPA, schools will use it. If an octogenarian's lifelong dream was to get a law degree and he had 4 advanced degrees with perfect grades and a 180 LSAT...he'd still likely need a 3.5 from his undergrad in the 1950s to have a puncher's chance at HYS.

HydroFlask666 wrote:Is it true or false that after taking a gap year after undergrad, admissions committees put less weight on your gpa? I am wanting to take a gap year, but will have to reconsider this option if my stellar gpa is weighted less as a result.

I took 12 gap years...and they put .0001% less weight on my GPA in the admissions process. As long as USNWR uses UGPA, schools will use it. If an octogenarian's lifelong dream was to get a law degree and he had 4 advanced degrees with perfect grades and a 180 LSAT...he'd still likely need a 3.5 from his undergrad in the 1950s to have a puncher's chance at HYS.

I started undergrad in 1990, detoured through a tour in the USMC, completed my undergrad after 11 schools over 16 years, picked up a grad degree from one of the best known/regarded universities in the country, and built a successful career in a challenging field (working full-time since 91, in my current specialty since 02).

With all of this said, my cycle went almost exactly as one one would suspect from my LSAC GPA & LSAT. My road is not for everyone, but I do not think that I would make any changes. Even if you may not see an obvious payoff in admissions, I think a gap is worthwhile in many different ways.

I had a 20+ year gap between undergrad and law school. Along the way I picked up a second undergrad and a Master's degree. The ONLY thing that mattered was my 1st undergrad GPA (2.x) and the LSAT. Everything past that point was ignored. It's a screwed up system, but that's the way it works.

One year isn't going to make any difference to anything, it's not anywhere near enough time.

Any number of years won't make a great GPA look less great, because it's still what schools report to USNWR for rankings purposes.

It's possible that many years, say 10+, can help make a poor GPA look *slightly* less poor - if you've done lots of great things in between that show your academic potential and so on. But as AccidentalAggie points out, not generally, because softs like additional graduate degrees don't get reported for rankings, whereas UGPAs do, even when they're really old.